A particular form of deep fried foodstuff and method of preparation thereof has long been known in various cultures, often commonly taking the form of the familiar fried pie, eggroll, and pastries of various sorts. In the making of such articles, it is common to provide a filling of some sort such as a meat or shrimp and cabbage mixture, fruit, other dessert filling or the like, which is sealed within an edible wrapper in the form of a pastry shell, flour pasta wrapper, or some other skin or membrane. The wrapper and filling therein are thence immersed in a hot cooking oil until the wrapper is cooked to a desired crispness while at the same time also heating the filler as desired.
A problem associated with such fried foodstuffs has long plagued even the most knowledgeable and skillful of food preparers, the problem being to provide the necessary heating of the inner filling while at the same time insuring that the wrapper becomes as crisp as possible. Several underlying and quite subtle problems have been uncovered in the discoveries of the present invention which have contributed to the difficulties of others in achieving this objective. Moreover, such problems have explained why the fried food industry has accordingly invested substantial amounts of time, money and effort in seeking solutions to these problems to no avail.
It is highly desirable in the preparation of such fried foods of the instant invention to accomplish the frying process in a short period of time. In this manner, the desired crispness of the outer shell may be obtained before the inner filling dries out and the food article becomes undesirably saturated with cooking oil. Fillings are, however, typically quite moist. The latent heat of vaporization of this moisture in the fillings unfortunately conventionally has resulted in larger frying times being required to get the outer shell to a temperature hot enough to crisp and to compensate for the steam released from the filling. Unfortunately, this in turn means that the wrapper either never has enough time to heat and crisp up if the filling is to be cooked to the desired temperature and moistness or, in the alternative, if the wrapper in fact does crisp as desired, the filling frequently was discovered to be too dry.
The aforementioned problem is exacerbated with the advent of modern cooking techniques embodied in microwave ovens. Such ovens have the well known property of heating the center of foods hotter than the outer portions. In the case of fried food rolls of the subject invention, it is highly desirable to be able to reheat such food rolls quickly with microwave cooking, thus giving rise to a large frozen food industry for this type of foodstuff, for example. However, due to the aforementioned characteristic of microwave heating, the moist center filling will be substantially heated first, thus releasing any latent moisture in the form of steam to the surrounding pre-fried wrapper. This substantially reduces the crispness of the outer wrapper in the case of conventionally prepared fried food rolls. Accordingly, particularly in the case of microwave reheating of fried food rolls, an outer wrapper or crust having an extremely crisp property was highly sought after in order to compensate for the effect of the steam released in the microwave reheating process.
These and other features, objects, and advantages of the present invention will become apparent from the following detailed description of a preferred embodiment, wherein reference is made to the Figures in the accompanying drawings.